Shen Cong had found the first rough form of a Superbrain in the thunderbolt giant fir at last. That blank patch in his senses did not prove it was the first rough form of a Superbrain, but he was certain of it.

Only a Superbrain's repulsion would shut his Activity wave out that way.

As though to confirm the guess, the moment his Activity wave touched the matter he took for the first rough form of a Superbrain, the thunderbolt giant fir came awake out of its sleep and gave its usual "Mm?"

Shen Cong ignored it.

Over these last few days of steady probing, the thunderbolt giant fir had given a few "Mm?"s each time. But its consciousness was newly born, blank as a sheet of paper, and beyond instinct it had no thought worth calling thought. Producing intelligence takes a brain to hold the thinking in, and it takes the experience of a life as well.

A beast walks where it likes, hunts its food, piles up experience of living, and evolving a higher intelligence comes as naturally as water cutting its own channel.

A tree stands fixed in one spot. Without some stroke of luck, it is very hard for a tree to produce real higher intelligence.

Shen Cong had no intention of teaching the thunderbolt giant fir anything. He was only studying it. He wanted the birth of the thunderbolt giant fir's Superbrain as a reference for the brain gradation that might one day come to him.

Shen Cong decided to use the Head Wave to reach the thunderbolt giant fir's first rough form of a Superbrain.

The Head Wave was a radiative fluctuation working through Firestarter energy.

It reacted with the first rough form of a Superbrain almost at once, and the blank patch in his senses stopped being blank. A blurred image of the rough form came up in Shen Cong's mind, carried on his Activity wave.

It was chaos in there.

Nothing like the clear, transparent Superbrain of a Firestarter Spirit. When Shen Cong had projected his consciousness into his own Superbrain, he…